The National coordinator for the SCORE initiative at the International Labour Organization, Samuel Asiedu, has called on multinationals and financial institutions to support the initiative aimed at supporting small and medium enterprises to improve their productivity.

According to him, the program which has benefited more than 350 indigenous firms so far is expected to expand to other parts of the country and offer requisite support.

The program was aimed at propagating the good initiative and involved the sharing challenges encountered by Ghanaian businesses with multinational firms. Similarly, the initiative was to get these multinationals on board with more support.

“Enterprises also do business with these major organizations and it is just right to ensure that these enterprises are delivering quality services for us, and to ensure that we need to actually build the capacity of these enterprises. So, lead buyers, not only banks, they could be other multinationals in the processing sector, mining sector [and] service sector but have a number of actors in their supply chain. [They] can subscribe to SCORE for these enterprises just to build their capacity and improve productivity and quality of these enterprises”.
Mr Samuel Asiedu

Beneficiaries building capacities for their businesses

On her part, Deputy Managing Director for the Management Development and Productivity Institute, Bernice Adjei, revealed that capacity building for the beneficiaries has been significant in getting desired results.

“It’s going very well and there are so many enterprises that are waiting to be part of this training; they really need it… the awareness that we are trying to do creating is that, employers must be able to enhance their employees training so they can do a better job. Through that, productivity will be increased. I think that we don’t connect productivity with training for our workers. But through this, people are becoming aware of the health and safety issues, mental health issues and social issues with our workers. Once you’ve identified all this and also put a plan in place for workers safety [and] at work, I think productivity is increased”.
Bernice Adjei

The SCORE program by the International Labour Organization was introduced in the country in 2009 with support from the Swiss government. Currently, the German government through the GIZ are supporting the initiative for this year.

ILO trains Ghanaian businesses on digitization

In July 2020, ILO SCORE Ghana Project organised a Webinar to help enterprises reposition themselves in the new normal successfully.

The program was on the theme: “Business Digitalization & E-Commerce in response to Covid-19 Crises’’. Highlighting the relevance of the program, the National Project Coordinator of SCORE Ghana, Samuel Asiedu revealed that, SCORE was a practical training that improved productivity among businesses.

He further explained that it offered in-factory coaching programme and working conditions in small and medium enterprises.

As at June, 2020, 212 enterprises had benefited from SCORE training in Ghana with 1,743 staff of enterprise participating in training workshops. Other benefits included an improved management-worker cooperation, improved worker attitude toward work and reduction of waste in production.